Create and publish content that is SEO and marketplace optimize - Content Production

Promote your content to your market - Content Marketing

If you can only afford to do one or the other, do it like this

1. Get your web platform in order

2. Use Wordpress. It will get you 75% there

3. Create some basic cornerstone content, informed by SEO

4. Post frequently and consistently

5. Promote your content

6. Do some advanced SEO

Speaker 1:

0:00

Make the logo bigger, moves at the speed of content these days. If you're publishing here, you're invisible.:

Speaker 2:

0:06

Welcome to make the logo bigger. Understanding the language that your audience leverages to search for things on Google is not exactly how you talk about your product or service, and so that research component is fundamentally critical.:

Speaker 3:

0:18

The podcast that takes you behind the scenes of a marketing agency:

Speaker 2:

0:22

when you're talking or thinking about marketing, everybody needs to go back to the basics for a little bit and just get back to the core little individual aspects of marketing and do some of the simple things better.:

Speaker 3:

0:33

Two guys that get paid to do this stuff on a daily basis,:

Speaker 2:

0:37

be what you expect people to expect you to be. That's a lot of expectations, right? So if you just focus on you know, why you're doing what you're doing and tell that story. People are going to pick up on that passion. Here's your host, Bill Rice. Oh, we don't. We don't need that because we get referrals, right? But at the very core of that, that referral was generated by some form of marketing and Mike Carroll. Understanding the language that your audience leverages to search for things on Google is not exactly how you talk about your product or service, and so that research component is fundamentally critical.:

Speaker 3:

1:08

And now the obligatory legal disclosure though rice is the founder and CEO of Kaleidoscope, a marketing and design agency, Mike Carroll is the head of growth at nutshell, a crm software provider. All opinions expressed by bill are definitely the opinions of Quantico. All opinions expressed by Mike or his own opinions expressed by guests of this podcast could be right or wrong. Who knows? This podcast is for informational purposes and has a reasonable probability of making your marketing better. And now this week's episode,:

Speaker 1:

1:38

Hey, welcome to make the logo bigger. This is bill rice who a founder and head of politico digital marketing agency, and I have with me as always, Mike Carroll, who was the head of growth at nutshell, and this is a podcast if you're doing this for the first time or kind of a new listener here. Now the whole focus for us is to help marketing directors and cmos:

Speaker 4:

1:58

really kind of understand the trends and the kind of the marketing tools and strategies and tactics that are available to them to really make the impact that their executive team, their bosses are expected from them. So, Hey Mike, how's it going? A pretty good bar. Yeah. I love the description. By the way. I like to think of us as a, the rubber meets the road team before we started the show. We were kind of talking about the difference between digital marketers and as we like to think of ourselves like hardcore lead generators, which is a, a different sort of slightly different approach. And what I really love about for those who are just tuning in our conversations is that we try our level best to focus on, you know, things that are, will produce tangible effects, tangible results, um, which is slightly different. Everyone wants to talk about brand and all that kind of stuff, which is important and we can have those discussions. But that's my favorite part about our, our, our talks.:

Speaker 1:

2:59

Yeah, definitely our goal with each one of these topics that we bring here is, is it you would come away with at least three to five actionable things that you can kind of take notes on, you could take away and you could literally do, um, after the podcast and get some sort of effect from. So to that end, um, again, we're all competitive people. Um, but we would love for you to share this out, um, and join the podcast and share it out with your other cohorts out there in the marketing director and cmo space. Um, so it can be as helpful as possible and uh, you know, these kinds of things build a network relationships too, because oftentimes when you're sharing something kind of shows you're looking and doing incredible things and um, anyway, so hopefully we'll be a resource, uh, encourage you to sign up and subscribe and share it as much as you can so we can get out there and build a bigger community.:

Speaker 1:

3:55

Alright, let's get to the topic. So today I'm really excited about this. This is probably one of my favorite things to do, or the combination of my favorite things to do in digital marketing. Probably what I've got the most history with, um, in general as far as strategy, uh, but the topic today is do I need a content strategy and Seo strategy or some combination of both? Um, and I think this is probably one of those topics that is misunderstood. I'm on a lot of different fronts as independent topics, content marketing versus Seo. I think oftentimes those are mismatched or move, you know, the actual concept gets confused back and forth, or sometimes you think you're, you're getting engagement and includes both, which is often not the case, but anyway, so we want to kind of break this whole topic down. Um, and I think Mike, the best approach to this is really kind of start with a sort of defining not only know what content strategy or content marketing strategy and Seo strategy are, but also kind of what they do out in the digital space when we're looking for performance. So let's, let's start up with, with content, is there anything you want to kind of light up with their, as we sort of define what do you get with a, what do you get with a content marketing strategy or you as a consumer, a, as a, as a, as a head of growth and marketing director, um, what do you expect to get from a content marketing engagement?:

Speaker 4:

5:27

You know, so I think this is an awesome question to ask. Like most people don't usually ask because they're not one in the same as, as you say, and when it comes to a content marketing engagement, what I'm expecting to receive, if I'm outsourcing that I'm here at nutshell. We do, you know, all of our content in house, uh, which is uh, maybe a different topic like to outsource, not outsource for later, but what I expected from a content marketing strategy or if I was hiring a content marketing firm, I expect how to say the Razzmatazz I, I expect content that is fundamentally focused on being engaging on entertaining or is hubspot might describe delighting your audience in a particular way. It doesn't mean it has to be devoid of search engine optimization or have an Seo goal I'm involved with, which we'll get to in a little bit, but primarily a content strategy is about engaging your users.:

Speaker 4:

6:24

It could be educating them, it could be entertaining them, it could be, you know, exposing them to your brand in a different way. It could be letting them behind the scenes of, you know, kind of what you're doing, but content strategies, um, you know, is, is the same way someone should think about like, what's the purpose of, uh, you know, have a television show, you know, almost in that sense, right? Like, it's the primary focus is the ability to keep eyeballs, you know, stuck to where you want. I mean, it should build your brand. Um, it should show credibility. Um, and it should worry less about keyword stuffing. Not that anybody should ever do that by the way, which we'll get to in a second. But, um, it, it, you know, and it establishes you as a thought leader. There's lots of different objectives for your content strategy. Um, but what it is not is not a like a traffic generation strategy or an Seo strategy and that's how I make the distinction.:

Speaker 1:

7:15

Yeah, I think that's, that's super, super important. And I'll just kind of from our perspective as an agency, if we are doing a straight a content marketing strategy, which we rarely do just that. Um, I would say there are a couple things going on when that happens. One, you probably have the other components of your digital marketing strategy in house and you and if you're, if you're buying one of these engagements independent of each other, then then you're covering the other pieces, right? So, and you need help just with the content marketing portion or you're, you're looking for us to plug into your team and serve that particular function. And I think there are three things, um, again, kind of three things that you're seeking to do when you, um, when you hired just for content marketing engagement, one, you just simply need the process and the production of content.:

Speaker 1:

8:15

Maybe you either don't have the in house capability and skill sets to, to manage an editorial program. Um, or to manage a content studio in house, which is very often the case, it's a little bit of a different process. Um, a lot of brand and product companies or product and service companies. They don't necessarily have like a journalist or an editorial, you know, person in house and so they just need somebody. It's a slightly different process and they need somebody to manage that, make sure that the trains run on time and make sure that isn't actually true creative editorial process it's going on so that you get that kind of content you were talking about, you get the content that's entertaining and, and is actually going to, um, kind of heightened the credibility of your brand or the attractiveness of it, which is kind of the second piece.:

Speaker 1:

9:04

So the second piece, um, that people should expect or, or may need, is just the audience development. So content inherently gives your audience something on a regular basis to, to kind of grab onto or to become aware of or to pay attention to or to keep tabs on a whatever the case may be. But it actually, it gives them something that gives your audience something to consume and enjoy on a, on a regular basis. And then probably the third thing, uh, with a content engagement is really, again, often provide you the resources to really expose the brand and tell the story that oftentimes, uh, as companies and as brands were so internally focused on kind of making the sausage, if you will, that um, we don't have the time to kind of tell the bigger, the bigger story and to be able to really expose the brand in a consumable way, um, to, to our audiences. And so that's, that's kind of the different pieces, just like why you would, would do that. Content marketing specifically:

Speaker 4:

10:16

story is a really good way to put that to me, right? Because, and I'll give, I'll give it like a really concrete example. So the way that we run content here at nutshell is that there are, there are two priorities when it comes to our content creation program, if you want to call it that, or we'll even say like our blog, like how we run our blog, I guess is a better way to put that, you know, some of the stuff is focused on Seo and that's, you know, that has a different objective and usually that content takes a different type of form a, which we'll jump into a little bit later. But those are more of your, like your ultimate guide to this. The how did this 100, one ways to do that, you know, type of stuff, stuff that we know Google likes, focuses on searcher intent.:

Speaker 4:

10:55

And then on the other side, you know, as a really concrete example, you know, we just published an article recently that's like, you know, why, why bill bellacheck would make an awesome sales manager at how. So like what you can learn from the, the winningest nfl coach of all time, um, you know, from running a sales team and like there's nobody's searching for that right? So there's no, there's no inherent seo value in that, but we already have an acquired audience and the superbowl is coming up and now we have this really engaging in sort of like interesting piece of content and like a different way to assess sales management styles and approaches. Um, and it's a funny article by the way. We'll drop it in the show notes for anyone super interested in. But um, but yeah, that's like the, that's like a concrete differences.:

Speaker 4:

11:42

Like if, if you want to tell a story and a good story and you know, that's a different set of skills, your point bill, I think that's a really important note to make is that just because you have an seo manager in your office by the way, or like even a copywriter that doesn't necessarily make them someone that is good enough or we're focused enough, I guess good enough is not really the way to put it, but focused enough to take the creative. Like to go to the creative length. That takes two to tell a truly engaging story about anything for that matter. Which is really where your content should be focused. Story is as that's a really good sort of pivot point or differentiator.:

Speaker 1:

12:19

Yeah, and I think a couple of things you hit on there that we should definitely go a little deeper on is one, whenever you're doing a content marketing strategy, whether you're doing it in house where you're hiring outside, it is really important to understand where you are in kind of your a company per position or where you are in the cycle of, um, of doing business. So if you're, you know, you're a startup and, or your or you've never really focused on content. You're building an audience. That editorial calendar is gonna look much different because you're doing acquisition of audience, you're doing acquisition of attention, um, versus um, someone who's got an established audience has done this well in the past, has a list, has a, uh, group, uh, in one of those channels that's paying attention and now you're focused on loyalty and retention and advocacy or evangelism, um, and, and that kind of stuff.:

Speaker 1:

13:17

So the content is going to vary depending on where you are on that spectrum. And that's really critical to understand, um, you know, because without that you could be doing the wrong thing. We see this all the time, right? If you're an acquisition mode, then you're probably gonna do some of the more, the link Baity list building seo kind of stuff. But once you've got a credible audience, you're trying to kind of just invigorates them and keep them paying attention to you and interested in. And so a lot of those, what, you know, we might consider fluff pieces are really critical because those are going to get your shares, so it's going to get your link backs so they're going to get you a social engagement. Um, so that's a whole different thing. And then kind of to that piece, and this is probably a lot of what you guys are doing in a nutshell is, and I think this is, I'm a big believer in this content should really presale your products and your services. So by putting that kind of content out, it gets people familiar with your culture, gets people familiar with your philosophy and when you, when you expose people to that and that audience is consuming that, then hopefully the ones that didn't inquire, I was going to be awesome. High quality leads because they're already saying yes, right. They already agree with you. Philosophies and alignment. They think what you're doing will work for them. And Man, that's so much better experience for your sales team.:

Speaker 4:

14:41

I totally agree. Then, you know, whether it's Simon Sinek or like, you know, sort of the thought leaders in the like in the brand space, the whole idea of people don't buy what you do. They why you do:

Speaker 5:

14:52

it. Um, you know, it makes a ton of sense for you to spend just a little bit of time. But even in the crm space is, and I've been working on this article recently, speaking of content by the way, which does not have a ton of seo value, but it's more on the content side. It's the idea that if your sales process is so complicated that there's not a crm. I'm out there that's going to match it, so you have to go down the path of like some people say is like, well I guess I'll just build my own custom crm. Then your processes Wonky, right? Like if, if like if you can't find a customer relationship, like a crm that's gonna you know, you build to fit your process into and like you need to go back and take a look at your process because it's probably a little clunky.:

Speaker 5:

15:38

It's probably overprocessed, so to speak. It's probably got too many steps in it and too much nuance. Now I'm not saying that there's no process in the world that wouldn't require custom software. That's not what I'm saying, but 90, nine times out of 100, you're probably thinking even a little bit too hard about what you're doing, but that's a, that's a piece of content, right? Like that. It's not as trying to grant keywords or whatever else. That is me trying to let our audience know that like philosophically we've built nutshell in a way that's supposed to simplify your sales process, standardize it, and allow you the opportunity to actually optimize it and the constraints that we've put into nutshell for any number of different reasons, whether it's, how, you know Dan relationships work or whatever else are just there because we didn't think of the thing that you wanted.:

Speaker 5:

16:25

It's actually there because we've thought really hard, long and hard about, you know, the entire process of how to build a crm software and like what is actually needed, what is essential versus like what is not. But the whole point of that article, to your point, bill is like, that's me preselling our philosophy and our product, right? Which is even if you don't choose nutshell, if you go to all the other crms, um, I'm trying to be helpful in that way. Like you need to rethink how you're building your process and that's part of our culture and everything else. And I think that's a really good point that you make. It's an awkward content is an opportunity, um, is like as lame and sort of like 19 sixties is a sounds like to express yourself, I guess, um, but express yourself in a way that it treats your audience to who your company is and why you do what you do and, and why you're good at it.:

Speaker 5:

17:12

And then once they get excited about that, then they're going to want to use your tool regardless, just because they want to be a part of what you're doing both from a product perspective. Also from a culture perspective, you know, we've probably talked about this or I talk about them like ad Nauseum, but so is the Internet by the way. So speaking of trends, it's really good thing to pay attention to. Drift is like awesome at this, right? So drift is not the only chat bot in the universe, nor were they the first normal baby. The last. Um, and I don't even know how to use our tool, nor do I know if they're the most sophisticated or most impressive when I do know by the way is that they have like sort of the most interesting and sort of intriguing and exciting brand. Um, and then that follows up with a really good product as well, by the way. You can't just have one without the other, um, but they are fantastic at like using content, by the way, is a way to get people excited about becoming a part of their club. Um, and that's where content is about. It's about inclusion. It's about excitement. Um, and it's, you know, it's about people becoming part of something larger than themselves is as crazy as that sounds.:

Speaker 1:

18:15

Totally love content. But let's jump to Seo now. So, um, so again, I kind of liked the way we started, like if you were to engage a, uh, an seo firm or just to have a team or an individual, uh, in house that's doing seo from, for you, um, what's your expectations that you're getting from that engagement or from that person?:

Speaker 5:

18:41

Yeah, my fundamental expectations from that person or that engagement is traffic 100 percent. So this becomes an Seo engagement, becomes an analytic engagement, right? It's very easy to measure the effectiveness and sto program I'm going to be expecting, you know, I'm going to be expecting them to work with us to identify not just keywords that have traffic volume in our space, but keywords that have business value to us. Um, so it's, it's, you know, it's one thing to rank for crm, let's say, because that's like the highest level keyword for us. It's another thing to let's say rank for sales process or sales automation, which is like a really cool feature that we have and there's traffic around it, but that it displays intent from the person searching for that. They might be in a buying pattern. So I'm going to expect from an seo engagement or a person that, hey, they're analyzing the behavior of our users and the behavior of the search marketplace to understand not only where the traffic is, but understand where the intent is and then I'm going to be expecting them to help inform.:

Speaker 5:

19:42

By the way, our content program on how we can better execute and obtain that traffic, increase our rankings in Google, like improve our, our, you know, our position serps. Um, and then every month I'm going to expect a report out of that person and be like, here's the movement. We wait, here's the optimizations we made, here's what it got us, here's the leads that were generated from our seo program. So it's a much more of a lead generation focused, uh, you know, very analytics focused engagement and, you know, while I care what the content looks like in an engagement like that, that I care much less about it as I more so than I would, you know, how productive the program is. I'm buying leads from, from organic search in an seo program. Um, and when I say leaves, that could be mql, simple email acquisition or that could be like a full on form fill or driving people to chat or what, however you're acquiring your leads depending on where they are in the funnel. But Seo to me is all about building your pipeline. Like, it has everything to do with lead generation and if it doesn't,:

Speaker 1:

20:45

and I think you, you bring in maybe confuses some, even as marketing directors and Cmo, I kind of run into this confusion a little bit from time to time, but so when we talk about Seo, the very definition of that is search engine optimization, right? But the first thing you said is I want traffic. Um, and so I, I think it's really important for us to make the linkage between the two, um, as to like how does Seo, you know, bring traffic search into. Because this is really important too. I think when you're, when you're doing an seo engagement, um, unlike some other things that you would do, you kind of need some other things going on, right? You need some other components or Seo doesn't, doesn't work. It's not, it's not just something that you kind of do independently. It's something that you do in concert with the website and concert with content in concert with landing pages.:

Speaker 1:

21:46

And so seo, in order for an Seo engagement to work that consultant or that in house person has to be able to influence a lot of these other different assets in platforms. And if they can't, there's, there's literally a there, you know, have a lot of their tools taken out of their toolbox as far as how to get those keywords to rank. So let's talk just a tiny bit about how seo kind of physically work. So when you're doing an seo optimization or search engine optimization exercise, you're really, you know, Google being, you know, all of the search engines are essentially a little bit of a black box. So your trying to come up with a strategy that will put your content landing page, website, all of the above in an enviable position based on what they look for a such the such that google.:

Speaker 1:

22:44

And I think that's kind of the clearest example to use. Google thinks that your content, your landing page, your website is actually the best product they can serve to their customer. And I think that's really important to understand is like Google puts people in good positions because they want to satisfy their user, they want everybody in the world to go to that little box on Google and search for anything they need. And the only reason users keep doing that is because the results they get satisfies that question or satisfies that need. And so, so that's a hard thing to do is cause you're competing to be the best answer, uh, to Google's customer. And they don't care about anything else. You don't answer that question. Well, they get rid of you 100 percent and it's an, it's a better way to think about, you know, as a, a, a company, as a content creator, you know, however you're classifying yourself. Like one, the one thing:

Speaker 4:

23:46

I wanted to say is it like, I also, by the way, wouldn't expect an seo engagement necessarily. And I'll be curious what you think about this bar, but I wouldn't expect an seo engagement necessarily to produce a single piece of content for me. Like that's not, that's not what I want out of a, like an seo contractor or, or an agency, even now they might have a content like division that is going to help with the search engine optimization effort, but if it's a straight seo engagement, like I'm actually not expecting to be delivered a blog article. That's not, that's not what, that's not what my expectation would be. And the way that you described the relationship between you, the content creator, are you the company Google and their customer is that the customers are both of your customers, but in this relationship like you work for Google, like you're a, you're a defacto contractor, you know, for the largest search engine in the world and they will reward you for doing well for them and they will punish you for doing this.:

Speaker 1:

24:43

Yeah, no, totally. And I think that's really kind of key. I mean you've mentioned like, okay, you wouldn't. And with these, that's why oftentimes in digital marketing you kind of need to make sure you have all the elements that, that, um, each component is going to need to be successful in place. Whether it's in house or you've got to bring in that component from our house, um, you know, so I think that's really critical to understand how these things kind of work together because I'm, like you said you don't because you are working for Google. The last thing you want probably is an seo engagement to produce your content because if they're like, if you've got your seo people, like even us in the agency, right? We've got different people that run SEO versus content. The editorial process, if you have like your hardcore Seo people running content, you're going to get like these awful awful articles because they're going to be very technical. I mean it would be, it would be like having your developers who build the website, right? The copy, right? I mean that's kind of what you're talking about. Seo is a technical exercise for the most part. Um, there's some creativity that obviously should be in there and a lot of times you've got crossover because they need the content. So they get better at that. But generally if you.:

Speaker 4:

26:06

Yeah, for sure, you could call it a social science if you want it because it's about human behavior and whatever else. So like even when you go to, you know, go to college and you go to one of humanities classes, right? Whether it's sociology or like whatever it is you're, you're studying like sure that social scientist is, is like interested in things that maybe are hard to measure or like, you know, like human intent or desire, like these types of things. But, but, but at the end of the day, like there's still scientists at the end of their name was, which means like you're doing things that involve, you know, measurement testing and then response like it, it is the:

Speaker 5:

26:44

search engine optimization is as much scientific method is like figuring out how to make water. I mean it's, it is a scientific exercise and I think often, you know, where companies run into trouble, um, to your point, right? Is that they hire a content person who says they're a search engine optimization expert, but they're not like in the and it's a, it's a different thing if the search engine optimization, it's not like finding a key word and then writing an article with the keyword in it 10 times. That is not like, that is not the thing. And I think that's where people run into trouble the most. Like oh all I have to do is make sure that my headline, my h one as the key word and you know, and then a subhead has the key word. Like yes, those things are important, but like that is not the extent of search engine optimization is a involved in a never ending project by the way is a really good example.:

Speaker 5:

27:32

So we, a month ago or two months ago now, maybe more than that, it was like a quarter ago, I guess like let's say four months ago we grabbed, you know, the number one slot, including the snippet I'm for sales process. It was awesome. Right? And then two weeks ago we lost it and then we gained it back and then we lost it again and like, and so figuring out like why that's happening has, has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of that piece of content or the story involved or the writing. It has everything to do with the technical exercise or the social science of search engine happens.:

Speaker 1:

28:07

No, for sure. And again, like what, what is, what is Google and this is where you're kind of doing a lot of research and you've got to stay up on it. Google is always changing things and you get little leaks and little tests from other people in the Seo field or whatever. But like, like why is Google making that decision? Right? So there's a decision being made, is your snippet for that moment in time, not getting as much click through and therefore maybe it's not as relevant. Um, is kind of the concept of sales processes and changing depending on its, on that snippet. So really kind of. And I think this is always the case, despite the technical nature of it, I'm a big believer in behavioral analysis, but really kind of looking at that from the perspective of Google serving their customer and looking at what you're presenting and what you've potentially lost and say like, okay, why did Google make that decision? A lot of times it's completely random because the algorithms are doing the algorithm thing. It's like algorithmic trading and the stock market, right? Sometimes it just, you know, they get the wrong signals and they make the wrong decision. So it could be that, especially if it's something that's, that's a, you know, pogo sticking back and forth between different decisions. But um, but there may be a pattern and so really kind of looking and say like, okay, why is this decision being made is super helpful. All right? So that we don't go too long.:

Speaker 5:

29:29

Not The plug you to Rbr, but like I do want to make notes as you and I have been working together both like directly together and then adjacently for, you know, the better part of the last decade now at this point, which is by the way that:

Speaker 4:

29:45

I've never met anyone better at understanding search behavior than you like. So, and, and the way that you taught me searching an observation when it was like when, by the way, keyword stuffing was a thing. Like that's how long we've been doing, um, is a, is a really important thing. So if you're going to go out and hire an agency, like an seo agency, that's what you're looking for from your agency. Or if you're, you know, our content plus Seo if you want them to do both or whatever else. If your, when you're hiring this person, if they're talking to you or this agency and that account manager or that principal or whoever is not talking to you about understanding the search intent or the behavior of the audience that you're trying to garner walk out of the room. I'm gonna be respectful. But like that's move on from the, you know, from the conversation because everything starts and ends with trying to figure out which is super hard by the way, you know, what putting yourself in a, in a stranger's shoes and be like, okay, what are they trying to do?:

Speaker 4:

30:43

Like what, what are they really trying to, to find out, discover, accomplish, you know, whatever the thing is. And if you don't start at that person is not starting from there. They're there, they're not paying attention to the way that the algorithm works these days. And you should find someone else to, to push down that engagement. Sorry, I just wanted to make sure that everybody listening knows how good you are at that because it's, it's a rare thing. Having worked with many different search engine optimization specialists over the years, like so often, like that critical component is missing from their intellectual skills? No, I think:

Speaker 1:

31:14

because you can get really focused on just keywords and then not really think about like why did somebody put that in the search engine? That's the second question you always have to ask. It's like, Oh, the keyword seems entirely appropriate, but like, why did they put it in the search engine? What are they looking for? Right. Um, you know, sales process is a perfect example, right? So sales process, somebody put in, you know, they put in to the search engine, Hey, I'm looking for a sales process. Well you could take that. I mean depending on the type of content or what you're trying to do for that, you could make the wrong call, right? You could, you could put in there and it's like, okay, this is how nutshell, you know, runs the sales process, but they're probably looking for like, Hey, help me look at a couple different ways that I can run a sales process and then how to execute that.:

Speaker 1:

31:57

So you can obviously put the nutshell component on the back end of that, but you probably want to actually show them a couple of different routes they can go and maybe how they can create that inside the software. Um, but they're, they're trying to discover something. They're in a discovery phase. They, for whatever reason, their sales process is not working, you know, so when you're writing that content, you're thinking, okay, what could they be looking for? Well, they could say, okay, maybe I'm trying to troubleshoot why my sales process isn't working, so you can tell them how to do that, right? You can tell them, okay, well here's one that works right here. High performance. Like they may have a couple of different contexts, like this is what a call center would look like, this is what a small business would look like and give them a couple of different types of sales process and then at the end you show them, you know, within tools, how to kind of implement those different options.:

Speaker 1:

32:42

But the point is you're trying to kind of cover the full intent of what. Why did that person put it in the, in the actual search box. And if you don't do that then you're going to fall short or you're going to get again, you're going to get that bounce out because you didn't answer the question. It's like, oh well crap. Like all I see is a screenshot of a sear, a piece of crm software. We already have that, right? That's not my problem. So you want to soften them into that conversation, right? By saying, oh, like, here's how you analyze anyway. I'm not to go through that content and you guys probably already did it better than I did off the top of my head. But. So before we kind of bounced out of the. Well no, that's what I get to meet.:

Speaker 4:

33:22

This is where I get to be the Luke skywalker didn't like to your Yoda, right? Because like you taught me how to do this. And absolutely. So that piece of content, by the way, when you show up on it, talks about how to build a sales process, how to measure a sales process, you know, how to, um, how to understand where the leaks are in your sales process. And they download a piece of content that's attached to it, right? It's like 16 sales process templates you can leverage. And then, oh by the way, nutshell has a sales automation tool that allows you to drop and drag and build a sales process and not to mention the measurement tools to do that as well. So you can see if it's working or it's not. But like, yeah, this is, this is why you taught me well. So that's super,:

Speaker 1:

33:56

super awesome. I love that because it also gives them some actionable. I'm a big believer in kind of having to take something away and print it out and this is for a digital guy. Not to sidetrack here because I do think this is important for a digital guy, digital guy. Like one of the things that I've always been a big believer in is that the, the best way for you to make a sale is to give them something that they take away from the digital web. They download it and print it out and they set it on their desk and it just sits there and it bothers them, right? Because they want to consume it, they want to read it. It's, that's passive aggressive sales going on there, right? They like, they know that that is sitting in that Ebook or sitting in that pdf on their desktop and they don't have time to read it.:

Speaker 1:

34:43

And then eventually they just call you and ask you to like, Hey, can you not exactly. But essentially what you kind of like read and do this for me, you know? So I think that's super important. Okay, so again, just to wrap up the seo part, um, is because I think this is important. This is like what should you be getting from Seo or what does it do? So here's the four things that you should be asking your seo agency or your seo person internally, your in house Seo and make sure that they're doing these four things are focused on these four things. One, it should again, talking straight Seo, not, not content, it should get your existing content in front of prospects, right? So that's the fundamental aspect of taking that content and figuring out how to move it in the search and so that it'll be in front of your, the, the correct prospect, the relevant audience.:

Speaker 1:

35:33

Number two, it should demonstrate that you're a leader in the field when people search for terms that that's, you know, essentially looking for that leader. You should show up, right? So if you're not showing up, if you're not playing, and, and I do this with a competitive bubble chart all the time, like if all your competitors are sitting over here and a group of like the number of search terms they have and the, you know, where they rank and stuff and, and your little bubble is like way off to the left of that chart and then you need to get in the game, right? You're not in the game. And so that's the first thing you want to look like a look at. If you're not in the game, then either your agency or your in house person, it's got to get you in the game because otherwise, you know, it's not in the game, right?:

Speaker 1:

36:20

Number three is then once you're in the game, you want to start framing off your space and fending off co competitors. One of the things that I think we often miss in Seo as far as, uh, um, something we expect out of people is that when you take a position on that first page, you're literally pushing a competitor out of the market, right? And so the more that you can push competitors off important pages, um, the less competing you have to do. So I think oftentimes we forget that SCO is actually a competitive strategy, right? It's actually pushing people out of the field of view of the marketplace, which is critical. And then the fourth thing is the same as the content it presales your products and services, right? It makes sure that when they put that search query in, they get the answer to it. Then one of the answers that's in their head when they come to the sales conversation or the sales call is a, is your solution. All right? So anything else on Seo and there's a great way.:

Speaker 4:

37:24

Yeah, there's one great way to like. So the last thing you said I think is really important one when it comes to seo and I got to find his name real quick. So I'm Tim Soulo. So one of the guys that I follow from an Seo perspective is Tim Soulo. He's the head of marketing I and product strategy. Correct. Which is a really by the way, Advanced Seo tool for those people looking for Seo tools. A bar and I are actually purveyors are users of sem rush for the most part, but um, anyway, but we found, you know, it's a great tool if you check it out, but tim, by the way, I love the way he writes and, and kind of how it talks about things. And his simple strategy for ranking seo content, right is one, is one, two, and three, and the way he breaks it down, is that a number one piece of content or number one level of content category, category one content, let's put it that way, is see content or search engine optimization, like keyword focused content that allows you to directly hype something about your product or brand very specifically and very naturally in that thing.:

Speaker 4:

38:23

So as an example, if I was selling dog leashes and the search is the 10 best dog leashes, you know, for walking small dogs, then great. Then you can write that and then you can both hype your product at the same time while being helpful to your consumer. Number two, category, category two, level of content is the way to say that, okay, well this is the search intent of the user and the article that I'm going to write on the piece of content I'm going to create. So to rank for these terms, um, it allows me to talk about my company easily, but it's not like a direct thing. So, so you could say that, oh great. You know, maybe instead it's like the 10 best ways to, um, to train your dog for, you know, to walk nicely with you, so to speak, and then great, so you sell leashes, you can mention the fact that you sell each is, but like that's not the focus of the article, but it's still, they're going to need a leash eventually.:

Speaker 4:

39:13

They might not be there yet or whatever else, but it's an easy thing. And then a category three pieces of content while still has value, I'm only really allows you to mention your brand like adjacently, like, okay, so you know, the 10 best dog breeds for cuddling on cold winter nights or whatever piece of nonsense content you're creating, you sell leashes, you can simply put yourself in that article is like, well, okay, we're dog experts because we're in the dog business so to speak, but it's. So that's the easiest way for you to kind of like categorize, um, the business value of, of content in general and, and more focused seo content.:

Speaker 1:

39:50

Totally. No, I love that. I love that. Anything, any type of frameworks like that, that kind of help you understand the, the, the realm of possibility and then take your goal and objective and figure out which one you need. I think those are all valuable. I always like to work within frameworks with clients too because it just gets their mind organized around something, especially in our case, not necessarily an inhouse case, but in our case, we don't expect our customers to be experts at Seo and content if they hire us. Right? And so we need to give them some mental frameworks to work within so that we can help them and guide them, make the right decision as to what they need and, and for them to understand why they're buying the services that they're buying. So, all right, so let's talk about, um, kind of using them together because I think in both of these cases, uh, again, whether you're bringing in a consultant or an agency to a to snap in a component you're missing or um, you've got all of this in house, I think it's still critical to understand that you need to have all of these things.:

Speaker 1:

40:57

And they need to kind of work together. So um, we've got kind of a list here and my company work through this is to kind of like, I'm kind of flowing through how you integrate these things together, what you need before you step to the next. So let's, let's create kind of a mental model as to how these things kind of work together and in the correct order. So it, so I think that, you know, like. No, no I want you to go with this one because this is actually something that you sort of innovated here at Kalydeco and became kind of a core product that we usually deliver first. So, so do you innovated it, lets kinda. Well why don't you kind of talk about this kind of first step that we always usually take a with both content and seo engagements.:

Speaker 4:

41:42

Yeah, sure. And even like, so we used to take it with almost any digital marketing engagement route with that. Let me be super clear. Any lead generation engagement, and we call it the Seo key word marketplace analysis. A lot of people think that when you talk about an essay, like a keyword marketplace analysis means that you're only looking at like keywords that have traffic around them, but it's really not what you're doing. A proper keyword. Marketplace analysis is going to tell you like three important things. One, yes, it's going to tell you what keywords are driving traffic in Google. In other words, when we say driving traffic, we mean that every key word that you use, whether you're looking in scm rush or google search trends or whatever tool you're leveraging to like kind of discover even ad words, keyword planner will, will give you some of this information.:

Speaker 4:

42:25

Um, is, you know, what volume of traffic, where is the traffic around keywords like so often. And, and bill, you've probably got a really good example of this because I know you're working in like the sort of conversational ai space these days. You know, so if there's a keyword marketplace that exists already, it's already defined itself. So if you, um, I'm trying to think of a really good example of a client we had in the past that like basically what you want to understand is the language or consumers are using to find your product or service on the Internet. So, and I'm trying to think of a good example. Maybe you can help me of, you know, what, what a company might call something and then like what the Internet actually calls it. Like I'm trying to think of a really solid example of that. Like on, I'm drawing a complete blank off the top of my head, which is, which is terrible. Let me see if I. can you have an example.:

Speaker 1:

43:13

Demonstrate a couple. One of the places that's the most difficult to do things like this is any sort of, um, and we love working in this space because it really actually gives us a huge advantage. But emerging technology, right? We're literally vocabulary is being defined. And so as far as a result of that definition, you can take control of keywords that you think are trending and um, or gaining ground. But it's really important to understand that. And this is one of the difficulties that we have with emerging technologies is a lot of times the search volume is really low because people know they want something but they don't actually know what to call it. And so I'll give you an example and I'll be general. So kind of give away the kind of, the secret sauce of how we're attacking this. But let's talk about conversational ai for a second.:

Speaker 1:

44:06

Um, so this is emerging technology. Even the people listening to it probably don't totally understand what the heck that means. And so what we've found is we as a technologist, internal to the company, um, can, can put together a list of terms which we say, hey, these terms are the right terminology to use to describe what we offer a product and service. Um, but what we've found as we go into the marketplace is because it's such a new concept that people who are in, there are people who are looking to do this right? They want to communicate, they want to engage their customers, um, by their customers using. I'll be really general, like they want to start engaging their customers and enabling their customers to do that with them by just using their voice. Right. So, but um, but the companies who are trying to bring that sort of interface to their customers so that you can talk to your Google mini and you can all of a sudden be interacting with your bank, like the bank doesn't know what to call that, right?:

Speaker 1:

45:15

They don't know what that's called. Right. So when we look at the search marketplace for, for what we're working on, there's some really kind of zany stuff in there. Um, and the stuff with the most volume is usually not only weird, um, but sometimes we got to get over this. Um, sometimes it's flat out offensive, right? You're like, that's retarded. Like why would you call it that? It's like extra consumer. I'm trying to figure out, we do this to like, you know, if you're looking for, if you're going on, I mbb and you're trying to figure out who this actor is. You, you might use a line from the movie, right? Because you don't know who that person is and you don't, maybe you don't even know the movie or you know, so searches can be really kind of messy things. Um, and then the other thing that plays into it, especially in emerging that confuses things is the media that people that are covering you because they're usually journalist and, and tech journalists are usually highly technical and, and, and super, but again, in emerging technologies that maybe they're just figuring out the language and that kind of stuff.:

Speaker 1:

46:18

So, um, so your media and your pr coverage could kind of botch up the marketplace too. They could call it some things that aren't really accurate or don't describe you well, but if they're using it on tech crunch and they're using it on venture beat and that kind of stuff, then you're just going to have to live with it for a moment and you can't.:

Speaker 4:

46:37

Yeah. Yeah. You have to go ahead. Yeah, that's what I remembered. I remember the example by the way. So we were working. So personal injury law as as Vr knows and everyone listening to this should also know because it's an interesting fact, is by and large the most competitive and expensive key word marketplace in North America, period. The cost per clicks, whether it's ad words, whatever else is crazy. And so we had a, a personal injury lawyer one time and we're working on straight up seo engagement who demanded that we only talk about car accidents and call them collision incidents. And I was like Bro, like no, nobody goes to the Internet and is like, oh I need a lawyer for a collision incident. And the and the this gentleman, as nice as he was, could not understand like why I kept harping on the fact that everything, every single time we talk about we're talking about car accidents.:

Speaker 4:

47:30

It's, we're talking about car accident, attorney car accident lawsuit, car accidents. That's what like the language of common people and what they're using on the Internet. So to your point, like that's the whole first objective of a keyword marketplace analysis is for you to understand where the disconnects are between your marketing or brand language. And the language of search intent or the language of your audience and what they're using, you know, to find that your product, your product or service. I want you to finish. And I, there's the other two parts of the keyword marketplace analysis, which I will mention that,:

Speaker 1:

47:59

yeah, no, the only other thing I was going to kind of bring to the table, and this is again something that you could be willing to do and I'll just bring my own personal example. So this was way back in the day, so Kalydeco actually started as a sas space crm and the market that we were targeting at the time or I'm high volume call centers who were buying Internet leads. And so, um, so the terminology, and this is kind of, you know, where I really understood how important this is to me, it didn't make any sense to call what we had crm because that was a customer relationship management. And that's not what we did. We actually converted leads. We've managed leads, right? So I literally invented the term, it seemed intuitive to me. Lead management, right? Nobody used it and I kept using it.:

Speaker 1:

48:55

In fact, I wrote the original a wikipedia page because I was like, we've got to change the mentality because if somebody comes to me for a crm, they're going to be disappointed because you can't use my tool to actually manage customer relationships. All that I can do is I can take in and I can do some really innovative things in distributing and managing and optimizing your leads to get them to the right salespeople. And I can make the most of those Internet leads. Um, so it is lead management. It's not crm, but until we could kind of build some momentum around that concept, uh, we had to live with and we did PPC and seo around crm. Right? And so, because that was the, that's what people were looking for when they needed a product like ours. And then over time we were willing to kind of endure the pain and do the effort, um, content and Seo was much easier back then, um, to, to kind of introduce a new keyword to the marketplace. But um, but until then we had to live with crm even though on every sales call I had to walk the customer through the journey from crm to lead management and convince them that's what they were looking for. Anyway. So that's just a little kind of historical personal example that's going to. Interesting.:

Speaker 4:

50:11

Well, it's super important by the way, to know just for everybody that likes. So I hear a bunch of, you know, I can hear, you know, through the podcast, our listeners, some of them being like, oh great, I'll just create my own. Or market doesn't work that way anymore. It doesn't work that way. Definitely as. I mean it's always:

Speaker 1:

50:28

been hard bright, but like it's easier when you were doing it, like when you described this, now it's next to it, unless you're willing to invest a significant amount of money in paid public relations, right? Because then you have to. The only way to create a new keyword marketplace is to get prominent publications to use the keyword that you're looking like that you want to use the phrase or whatever that you want to use. And to your point, we are get them to use it in a place where people run into it like randomly, like you know, and are exposed to it at the point where it becomes the common nomenclature associated with the product or service that you're selling. And that is a both time consuming and expensive. So I'm going to put one caveat on, I love talking about this kind of stuff, but it's gonna make us longer, but hopefully this is valuable.:

Speaker 1:

51:18

So there is, again, you have to understand who you are as a company and what you're trying to achieve because everything that you said, w definitely applies for mature marketplaces and industries, right? So you compete in the crm space. Absolutely. You're not going to move that marker because it's so competitive. There's so many options. And so you have to live within that marketplace and you have to compete. Well, I'm in the emerging technology space where we love to play in it. It's actually a little bit of a different setup and this is one of the reasons that I love this space. Uh, and so if you're a startup software company or something like that, uh, in emerging space or you're trying to change the way that people do business, this is exciting. So what we're doing with that and kind of the Ai and the vr space is we are kind of trying to, uh, you know, using the Gretzky, he probably wasn't probably wasn't his anyway, but I'm skating to where the puck's going to be.:

Speaker 1:

52:15

Um, so we have, we actually do two exercises with those emerging companies is we'd like, hey, tell us how you correctly articulate what you do, like what are the words that you use, what's the right thing to call it, you know, um, is there a difference between machine learning and deep learning, you know, like get down into the guts of helping me understand like the correct terminology and then we go through an evaluation to say, okay, will the market adopt this terminology? And the ones that we feel like they will adopt, I'm usually for clarity there. They're just going to have to because there needs to be some clarity in how we talk about things. Then we will take on and we will do things to create a marketplace for that terminology, but we also have a second piece of that strategy which is, okay, the people that are looking for us now that are doing it all wrong. Where's the traffic and where can we get their attention onto our, you know, our, our content or our strategy to kind of change the language and to veteran form and then this can really work good because like the people that want to think that they're smart and innovative business leaders, like they'll want to adopt the correct:

Speaker 4:

53:26

language and so that you can definitely influence that quickly. So all right, you can add, you can hijack, you know, you can hijack the wrong terms and then push them to the right. That never. That's a whole bunch of those that we're playing in right now and it's helpful sometimes. Like I said, it's frustrating to leadership in those companies because they, they, they're exacting people, right? And they wanted to do it right, but we have to convince them that now like you have to have to talk to the lowest common denominator. I can only, I can only imagine what, it's hard enough to have a conversation with a lawyer about why you can't call things and what you want to call them. I can only imagine what it's like when you're talking about like, no crap. Like technology science. Okay. So let's, let's, let's, you so that we can actually get to the next step.:

Speaker 4:

54:18

Was this real quick? So the other two components and the Seo keyword marketplace by the way. So the one. Okay. So now you've found that the language of your marketplace, right? The language of your consumer, which is, you know, as we discussed, not always the same as how you discuss it. The second component is like who is the competition that you're facing in this marketplace? And more often than not, particularly when I was working on the agency side with bill is that you find out that your clients, for example, and you'll find out this too about your companies, that your competitors, your digital competitors are not the same as your offline competitors. Sometimes they are and sometimes there's some overlap, but more often than not, your major competitors are actually not the companies you're competing with to grab that sort of straffic. More often than not, they're large publications or lead aggregators or you know, some of these other massive digital properties are in this space and that helps you really have an understanding.:

Speaker 4:

55:06

So when you're trying to compete with your actual, your direct competitors, your product or service competitors, that keyword scenario, that's actually not who you're competing with and which terms you need to pay attention to, the type of content and Seo strategy that the your actual digital competitors are putting forward. So that was the second thing, component of it. And then the third component of course like had an opportunity for you to do one of two things. One, to identify the key words and, and the parts of your keyword marketplace that were obtainable for you from an Seo and organic perspective and those for which you were going to have to pay to play. Um, and analyzing those scenarios. A good search engine optimization specialist or agencies should be able to identify those very quickly for you, which simply says that like, you know, even Neil Patel's got a tool out now that give you like a percentage of likelihood that you'll rank in the top five for a particular term based on the competition of the top five people that are already there sitting in that term. And sometimes there's a really easy to overtake a position sales processes. One of those key words that we found, right? Like nobody was really there, no one was paying attention to it. So we only had to do is write one article. We've got decent domain strength and we've got it now. Now we just got to keep it maintained and updated. However, on the other side, you know, if I wanted to rank for crm that, you know, the top ranking, you know, clothes for crm is salesforce. Salesforce is a billion dollar:

Speaker 5:

56:24

company. They get over a million visits to their blog like a month. And so it's a, it's a much more competitive keyword. But, but my analysis showed me that and it's like, okay, well if I want to play, if that space has value to me that I might have to think about doing paid acquisition in that space or finding other smaller keywords to go after or whatever else. So like those were the three super important components to understanding your key word marketplace, which is again, one year the language of your audience and what they're using to search for a product or service to who your actual competitors are. And three, where are the actual opportunities that you can go after today to get the results that you:

Speaker 1:

56:59

super important. Um, and just to round that out. So once you have all that information, I think another kind of big piece, I'm actually two big pieces is to really then create or have somebody help you with the editorial process itself because oftentimes we take all that research, we're overwhelmed by it or were invigorated by it for a moment in time and we'll just kind of like kick out a piece of content or will say, oh, we've got to write something about this. And, um, but then there's no, there's no process to sustain that then, so you, you put that analysis away and stick in the drawer, and so the, the, the number two piece of content never happens, right? And so you need to take from that, you need to inform yourself in such a way that you can kind of build out a full editorial calendar and figure out what that cadence is going to be, um, and then document it and make sure that you're putting the time, the resources and the talent towards making that a sustainable process.:

Speaker 1:

57:56

Because, and I run into this all the time with clients is like, in order for Seo to work, you have to give Google something to work with, which means you have to publish contents, right? So to just sit there and, and even a technical seo engagement without some sort of content, you just can't do anything. There's, there's, there's literally nothing to work on. So it's important to create that creating publisher editorial process. And then the last thing that you should never forget, um, and sometimes we kind of get into this, you should almost put as much or more time into promoting the content. Don't just post it up there and then pray for, for the Google Bot to reward you a, you got to get out there and move it around in the space, you to share with colleagues, put it out to your email list, get it out into social media so you should have some sort of strategy around how you're going to promote that. And that's usually a little bit of a blend. A probably falls more towards the Seo than the content piece depending on who you're, who, you're, who's doing that? Uh, but it needs to be in there. Somebody's got to be in charge of promoting.:

Speaker 5:

59:02

Okay. So let's cut that off. Go, go. I forgot one. Hold on, sorry. I think I forget one critical thing about the keyword marketplace analysis, which I'll take two seconds to mention. The other thing is it lets you know what your ranking for today and, and like [inaudible] where you're not ranking, right? So that's the other critical component. As you build your editorial calendar, you should have a nice balance of hey, we need to create this new piece of content here. And then the other side of that, which is like, nope, we actually, we've gotten really opportunities and x, Y and Z and all we have to do is update this page, change this blog post, you know, whatever it might be. So content or SEO programs, they're as much about existing content optimization as they are about creating new content and going after new keywords that's super important.:

Speaker 1:

59:46

That is that it's totally important because you can, you can definitely get more like percentage impact by doing that for sure. So yeah, good, good, solid point. Okay. So let's round this out with because everybody's, now you've got all these things floating around, we've talked about all these different things. So if you've got to go away with an action plan, um, I want us to walk you through kind of step by step in order what you need to make sure kind of is accomplished. And if you have to serialize this thing, if you got to do one engagement versus another or you've got limited resources, this list is really important because you got to get these things in order for you to have the impact with what you're buying or what your in house person is trying to do. Or if you are that in house first and you're the in house content strategist or your in house seo expert, like if you don't have control of these things or you don't have the ability to influence how they're kind of set up, like you should probably go get it, you know, look for a different position because you're just not going to be able to have been performed.:

Speaker 1:

60:55

I mean, it's, you're just going to be. I can't tell you the number of time we'll talk about some situations in companies that how people kind of do things that, that disadvantaged digital marketing. So, which I think is important. Okay. So first and foremost, this is actually, this is the, I need to go get another, another job. Number one thing, your web platform has to be an order. Um, so what I mean by that is, and you need to have, if you're in charge of digital marketing, you're the marketing director, um, and, and that's on your kpis for your job. Then you should have some control of the web platform and what gets published on it. Oftentimes I'll see one of two scenarios and again, these are red flags. If you're a marketing director in these, one of these two scenarios, then you either got to fix this or you need to go get another job because you're not going to be able to perform.:

Speaker 1:

61:50

One is your web platform is stuck in it, right? And because of the nature of your company, its functional role is to maintain all of the different laptops and devices such as your salespeople can perform, um, and support them like technical support. If that's who's running your web platform, then like you got a problem, right? Because you are never going to get priority in that mix. And the, it, the staffing and skill set and that type of it department is probably not capable of supporting you in any way for the types of things you need to do. The second piece that I run into all the time is, um, it's, we run into this with our technology companies all the time, right? Is if you have a highly technical company, you probably have an army of developers building a software product and then as a side duty, uh, they ask them to maintain your web platform and for whatever reason, or even sometimes those people want to do it because it's Kinda like a fun side project for them that again, you're going to have a problem because those people are not have the mentality and their skill set is not aligned with what you need to do with that web platform.:

Speaker 1:

63:11

Um, and so in both those scenarios are all Jack:

Speaker 4:

63:14

your marketing. Yeah. Like, yeah, the marketing of your company is not a fun side project. That is not an attitude that's going to get you where you needed to be. And like this is a pain, everybody wants to do their own, like everybody wants to control their own destiny so to speak, but the hardest part about digital marketing and any company, let alone a technology company is like understanding what you're good at and what you're not. And like focusing on the things that you're good at and then allowing other people and other talented people to do the things that they're good at. And the website is like the nexus for the greatest mistake that every tech company or even non tech companies make. We want to manage it in house. It's a man and just what a waste of time I can go. There's a reason. There's no reason to suffer that:

Speaker 1:

64:00

because the, the, the technologies and the platforms that hosts our website, our websites is, there's, there's no reason for it to be managed by, you know, by either one of those groups because it's just not necessary. They're going to get it wrong. And, you know, if they're saying, well, you know, good development requires, you know, six week sprints and pushes, like, no, I need to be on that platform every single day, probably multiple times a day doing what I need to do. That's how dynamic digital marketing is. And so, uh, anyway, so get that. You've got to make sure that that's taken in order and that takes a little bit of analysis to, um, by somebody who understands digital marketing and understands seo and content to make sure that that web platform is configured in organized in such a way that it will be attractive to google. So that's hugely important. So, which brings us to number two. If you're not an expert in this sort of thing and you've never been able to have access to your web platform in the past, um, then my number two recommendation and probably for anybody period is just use wordpress. You're going to get 75 percent of what you need for Seo and content correctly by just implementing wordpress.:

Speaker 4:

65:15

No, I, the tendency to think:

Speaker 5:

65:18

is that like, I don't know why it is still is today vr. But like people think of wordpress and they, they think, you know, it's and we ran into this problem a lot when I was at Quantico of course then it's a blogging platform. So let me say this once and for all, for everybody listening, wordpress is an enterprise can be either something super easy to use for a small business or at its core, by the way, is an open source enterprise content management software. It is a cms that can be leveraged to do anything that you want it to do, but done so in such a way that idiots like me can change the phone number, what I need to or like add a form or whatever the thing is. So when people scoff at wordpress, particularly large companies, you know, Ebay uses wordpress, the New York Times uses wordpress more websites or companies. Fortune 500 companies were present. Any other platform, and it's not a blogging platform is an enterprise. Cms is a hyper flexible and super easy to use for people like to do that. So don't go down the bad like, or we need a custom cms to handle our workflow or it's, you're probably not published well and just, yeah, and:

Speaker 1:

66:23

just to be clear like this is the numbers I always like to cite and they probably changed a little bit, but they're essentially here. So we're is 35 percent of the websites on the web in general. Um, and the, the number two market share after that is they're all single digits or less. Um, so there, so there's a, an over, even though it's like 35, there's an overwhelming dominance and for those that are using content management system, it's well over 60 percent. Um, and again, all the other ones, drupal's, Joomla, all that other nonsense this against single digit market share. So, um, so the wisdom of crowds would tell you you need to do that. So have control of your website and the platform itself so that you can do your digital marketing, put it on wordpress period. And then number three is now we can start the business of Seo and content.:

Speaker 1:

67:15

And my suggestion, you may have a different reference point for this, Mike, is to, to start with some basic cornerstone content informed by Seo and I actually believe in and a lot of Seo folks would disagree with me because there's another camp out there. I like to start with the, the, the highest level, most generic piece because I think that in general, in most cases the customer has an expectation even if they don't get there via seo initially. Um, there's two things that are important to having those kind of big, chunky terms on your website. First one, when somebody does get there, however PPC or referral or, or whatever email they're going to need, there's some, there's some sort of mandatory baseline content that they need to read to even understand what you do. Right? So there's, there's probably needs to be a page about like what crm is and what did you do for you?:

Speaker 1:

68:17

Right? Even though you'll never rank for crm, there's probably a forward slash crm page somewhere on your site. The second piece of this is when Google does start to index and look at your site, even though they probably won't rank those core keywords, um, it's important for them to have a baseline profile to understand what you do and sometimes when companies start with all of these long tail a sort of articles and don't have some base landing pages for the core concept, I think Google Bot gets there and get super confused as to what the heck they do. Right? So if, for instance, I use you guys as a Guinea pig if nutshell didn't have some core pages and landing pages that defined crm or small business crm, um, as a core concept, and this is what nutshell is about, this is the definition of it and you, instead of when you launched out, you published a whole bunch of articles about sales process, then there's a good chance that Google would mix you in with all the sales gurus that are trying to sell their books, right? And that's not what you do, right? So I think that that cornerstone content is really good as a first step.:

Speaker 4:

69:33

I totally, I fundamentally agree, the only amendment I would make to cornerstone content is, you know, if you're going to go about this process, it's, it's exactly in line with the cornerstone content isn't like, just like you said, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. So like if you want Google think you're a duck, then you've got to make sure the whole website walks and quacks the second. But the other amendment I would make is simply when you do a keyword marketplace analysis and you're looking at this particular thing, focus on the architecture of your website, right? Like, and, and that's part of the cornerstone content. So if you have to create this cornerstone content or it's lacking on your website, then make sure that the architecture of the website reflects it. Like a keyword focused architecture I think is as, as important in the same vein.:

Speaker 4:

70:18

Like in the same conversation as the cornerstone content and where and how it's organized on your website. And once you get the psych, you know, walking in quacking like a duck, then you can go down the long, the long term or long tail keyword terms and you can attack all those things and all that kind of stuff. But you have to have a place. If you bury that cornerstone content on page 92 and the hierarchy of your website, then Google's not going to see it. Like, I mean you'll see it, but it's just not gonna won't make sense to it. So organizer website logically from a search engine perspective. And often you'll find that like, because you know, I don't know how you'd describe this bar, but like, so if search engines are the ones dictating how you organize websites since when they were super simple, like obviously the algorithm is highly complicated now in social signal. I mean like there's whatever, 200 different ranking factors or some crazy number of ranking factors. But what ended up happening is that the way search engines work initially has also conditioned human:

Speaker 5:

71:14

beings to think about websites and information on the web in the same manner. So you're, you're not only doing a good job of reorganizing your website from Google's perspective, but your users are going to expect a more hierarchal structure to your website from like super broad to the drilling all the way down to the minutia of whatever it is you do. So I think there's advantage of looking at the architecture of your website and I know that at Kalydeco, you know, we've had great success with just reorganizing the way someone's current content, you know, existed on the, on their website is they just had all their most important content buried six clicks from the homepage and like it just doesn't make any sense to google. So nothing ever ranked. So I think as you're thinking about that cornerstone content, make sure that it's either, you know, one click away from the home pages is the best way to thing.:

Speaker 1:

72:01

Yeah, totally. Um, all right, so now let's go into, um, sort of the architecture, total believer in that and just feel yourself a favor, like the terms that you're trying to rank for or for whatever reason you think will bring you the best traffic. Just take a look at who the competitors are on that page and that'll help inform how it's organized and how people sort of look at that architecture. And one of the things that I urge people to do is don't get overwhelmed by the design trying to really figure out like what are they doing with that page? Don't look at the design, look at like, why did they write the things, why did they organize it in that manner? Why is their site set up that way? Um, and kind of look at the more technical aspects, um, move into point number four.:

Speaker 1:

72:46

Um, so once you've got that control of your website is on wordpress, you've got some of those basic anchors on your website as far as content. Now you need to get that cadence going. You need to get that editorial process going that you need to get it humming and you need to have deadlines. You need to do things frequently and consistently so that you're starting to condition your audience and you're starting to condition the Google Bot to know like, okay, this is when we update things. This is when we put fresh content out on the web, um, and helping people to know that like, okay, they're alive, they're active, they're engaging, they're going to be, they're going to have the latest trends and information because they do this on a regular basis. It's, it's what they do. Um, anything on frequency and consistency, that's, that's a big one. We often kind of,:

Speaker 5:

73:37

that's my, that's my mantra. It's frequently and consistently not just for your Seo, not just for your content, for your email marketing, like if you're going to do something like do it at a, at a regular pace, no one's ever going to pay attention to anything you do. If you're like, oh, I'll send out an email newsletter once every six months or I'm going to publish a piece of content like that, that just, uh, maybe that's advice for life, like, just be frequent. It's just a sense of how you approach:

Speaker 1:

74:00

when you need a boost in your revenue. Right? So customers were,:

Speaker 5:

74:06

you're like a distant relative that shows up every, every six minutes asking customers are smart, they understand:

Speaker 1:

74:12

what's going on there. So don't, don't be that person and invest in error in your customers. Okay. Then promote your content. We've talked about that a little bit. That's a whole nother show in itself as to how you go about doing that. Then once you've done all that, this is kind of the wrap up, then you can move into advanced seo, like the stuff you buy a is a straight seo engagement for most clients. They're not ready for it, right? So I would hesitate to, to engage in a straight up seo engagement unless you're pretty sophisticated. Um, because, um, because you, you probably don't have everything in order for that Seo firm to really, uh, do their magic, right, because there's the contents, not there. It's not happened frequently. Platform doesn't work. It's not technically. So you're gonna waste a lot of money with that agency. I'm doing it just getting ready. All right? So I'm either hire a company to do that, uh, that knows how to get it ready and go through those steps. But don't go to an seo firm. It's the wrong order. Alright. Yeah,:

Speaker 5:

75:16

no. And I think to get started, you make a really good point to get started to like my last note on this is if you're at that beginning stage, just read about it, listen to a podcast, read about it like you're going to learn. It's not as complicated and overwhelming as you think where it gets complicated and overwhelming is when you're working in a really competitive marketplace and like you're going nationwide or global, all that kind of stuff. So just there's a lot of diy stuff that'll get you prepped to get the most out of an agency relationship or even a freelancer relationship. You'll surprise yourself on what you can learn and do if you read things carefully, listen to podcasts like this, and then you take the actual action to the letter and have faith. Seo in general, by the way, is like a longterm con. It is not, uh, is not, uh, bringing in leads tomorrow. It is not the type of strategy, as long cons, like you gotta do it consistently and stick with it over time. And if your first results come within six months, then like, that's okay.:

Speaker 1:

76:10

That's kind of like help you kind of gauge what you need when. Here's a little bit of a rule of thumb here. You would probably engage a digital marketing agency who could do a multitude of strategies. If you are a funded startup in all these cases, you're going to need to have some budget, right? So you need to be a funded startup and you're trying to kind of create a good digital platform from scratch. Then you're probably looking for a more general digital marketing agency that could bring multiple tools to the table. Um, if you are an established company, right? And you've got, you know, offline sales going, you've got to salesforce, you do some outbound stuff or whatever and you want to bring digital into the strategic mix. And then depending on who else is in your marketing, because he's probably got a fairly sophisticated marketing organization at this point, then you're probably looking for those gap fillers, fillers, like how do I get onto the digital, how do I make digital a significant part of my revenue stream where sales leads and that kind of stuff.:

Speaker 1:

77:16

And then you're probably looking, okay, where are my gaps, right? And so you might actually bring in some more detailed and specific skillsets and then if you've got a thousand pages or more on your website, okay, and you've got traffic in excess of 10,000 uniques a month, then you're probably starting to look for more sophisticated strategies and that's when you go for your advanced strategic engagements, you're advanced seo engagement, you're advanced content engagements. Those are the points when you've got enough like raw material to work with that those, a point solution agencies or those more strategic agencies like Kalydeco course, um, can really work some magic very quickly because you've probably done a lot of stuff but you didn't do a lot of stuff with a strategic mindset. And so there's probably a lot of things to be done there. So that'll give you just kind of a rule of thumb as to how to build that.:

Speaker 1:

78:23

I'm okay. I can talk about a bunch of other things, but anything else to wrap us up? My. No, no, no, that's it. I mean, I think we've covered a lot today. You know, it's a lot to take in and consider if you're rebuilding your website. I love it. That's you're looking for crm. We use nutshell. Uh, definitely go out there and look for nutshell whether you're a small business or even starting to move towards that larger enterprise. I'm super, super good platform. So. Alright, we're gonna wrap this one up. This is a make the logo bigger. Uh, as always, we would love for you to subscribe to introduce us to all your friends, uh, by sharing this out there. And if you need us on these fronts, we need a crm. It need some digital marketing strategy, a love for you to reach out to us. As you can tell, we love to talk. So at the very least you're going to get a great conversation. So until next time, good luck out there.:

Speaker 3:

79:19

Thanks for listening to collide and make the logo bigger podcast. Leave your comments and reviews wherever you download your podcast. Find us on the web at [inaudible] dot com. K A l e I d I c o.com.: